ROCKNE KREBS: The Smoke Drawings

ROCKNE KREBS
The Smoke Drawings

March 19 - April 30, 2016

While serving in the Navy Reserve (1962-64), Rockne Krebs learned celestial navigation, inspiring his interest in light, leading to his first laser light work “Sculpture Minus Object”, 1968. By the early 1970s Krebs was a rising star. Blasting geometric arrangements of laser beams across vast spaces drew curators as well as scientists to Krebs’ studio. There had never been anything like his work. During the course of a four-decade career, Krebs created over forty public commissions, some temporary, some intended to be permanent. Due to changing civic administrations and insensitive real estate development, only four public light sculptures exist today. Conversations about the re-construction of some of these pieces have begun to take place. Presently it is Rockne Krebs’ works on paper that provide the greatest insight into this revolutionary artist’s career.

In 1972, Rockne Krebs received a Guggenheim Foundation grant. After a succession of experimental light sculptures the artist wished to devote time to drawing. Krebs realized that his numerous ideas for pieces exceeded his immediate ability to fabricate them; the grant afforded him the time to create graphic works describing the designs for future sculptures. At the same time, Krebs sought to create drawings expressing the atmospheric and ephemeral qualities of his light works. Pushing beyond the traditional means of rendering, Krebs mastered a process for controlling and capturing smoke as a means of drawing. From 1973-1975, he produced numerous “smoke drawings.” As evocative as his light sculptures, they added an emotive dimension and personal scale to his oeuvre. ROCKNE KREBS: The Smoke Drawings is the gallery’s first Krebs show. It is the beginning of renewed attention to an artist who was, nearly 50 years ago, at the forefront of art and technology.

Accompanying the Krebs Smoke Drawings will be a selection of works on paper by Leon Berkowitz, Gene Davis, Thomas Downing, Sam Gilliam, Alma Thomas and Anne Truitt. Krebs worked with and was influenced by artists of the Washington Color School, sharing their affinity for experimentation with color and line.

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